Epi Special Seminar

Back to Epi Seminars

UW Epidemiology 2010 Distinguished Visiting Epidemiologist

Malcolm Maclure, ScD

British Columbia Chair in Patient Safety and Professor, Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology
and Therapeutics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC;
Director of Research and Evidence Development, Pharmaceutical Services Division, BC Ministry of Health Services, Victoria BC; and
Past-President of the Society for Epidemiologic Research.

Motivation for the panel discussion:
Epidemiologists learn classic methodological approaches for good reasons: A study is more understandable and credible if it uses a standard, established design and proven methods of statistical analysis. On the other hand, epidemiologists may also develop new methodologies for good reasons: Breakthroughs in our understanding of the scientific method or in technology can yield methods that produce more valid results.

According to UW epidemiologist, Dr. Tom Koepsell, when faced with a research situation where our tried and true methods are inadequate, epidemiologists earnestly, “retreat through a hierarchy of stronger to weaker (but usually well-known) alternatives until we find an option that fits the constraints. Then we have to decide whether that option is good enough: how likely and serious the biases would be, what we can do to probe for artifact and try to get around it, and what the consequences of error would be."

Dr. Maclure writes, “Some of the worst and most influential epidemiology is put to use in the domain of health services research. In circumstances where epidemiological methods are used to address health services questions, we are often forced to innovate for practical reasons because databases are large and almost free, but were designed for administration, not research. Yet the risks of innovating are often less than the risks of knowing almost nothing about expensive and controversial problems. To bend or not to bend – that is the question.”